244. Chapter 244

Alex wrings her hands in the car the entire drive over.

Until, that is, Maggie takes one hand off the wheel, reaches over to the passenger’s seat, and laces fingers with her girlfriend.

“They’re gonna love you, babe.”

Alex takes a deep breath and nods and just turns up J. Cole, losing herself in mouthing every word flawlessly (closing her lips, of course, at every n-word), and Maggie’s thumb swipes across Alex’s hand in understanding silence until she has to make the sharp turn onto Star City University’s campus.

“You ready for this?” Maggie asks after she parks in front of the Student Union building, and Alex’s eyes are in secret agent overdrive as she assesses every single student walking by.

“I had a… rough time in college.”

Maggie watches her with soft eyes and a tilted head. “The drinking?”

Alex nods, eyes fixed on a passing group of pajamas-wearing students, one of the boys jumping up on the other’s shoulders, making the entire group erupt in raucous laughter and a humorous backpack fight.

“I wonder how different it would have been if I’d known I was… gay.”

Maggie smiles faintly and leans across the car to kiss Alex’s nose. “Wanna go find out?”

Alex bites her lower lip and adjusts her jacket. “You’ll hold my hand?”

Maggie grins. “The entire time. On that note… wait there.”

Alex furrows her brow as Maggie practically hops out of the car and jogs around to the passenger side. She yanks the door open and holds out her hand to help Alex out.

“I’m a woman of my word, Danvers. You want me to hold your hand the whole time, then I’m gonna do it the whole damn time.”

Alex blushes and slips out of the car, gulping at the idea of finally holding another woman’s hand on a college campus.

“Adrian says the club room’s in the basement, first left after the bookstore. This way.”

Alex holds tight to Maggie’s hand as they weave through college kids with faces buried in their smart phones and college kids with faces buried in their books and college kids with faces turning up into grins that Alex doesn’t quite know how to interpret at the sight of Alex and Maggie’s interlaced fingers.

But Maggie’s stride doesn’t lose cool confidence, and Alex finds herself turned on at the way her girlfriend moves in the world, the way she navigates every space like she knows it so well, even when she most certainly doesn’t.

Like she has a right to be in the world, even though it’s worked so hard to convince her that she doesn’t.

They’re staring at a door utterly covered in an explosion of rainbow flags before Alex knows it, and Maggie shakes her head.

“Well, Adrian’s clearly made his impact,” she chuckles, and the sound relaxes Alex.

True to her word, Maggie doesn’t let her hand leave Alex’s once, even as they nod at each other and Maggie pushes the club room door open; even as there’s a high-pitched scream and Maggie stumbles backward slightly with the force of Adrian’s hug; even as the blurry mass of excited college boy shifts from Maggie to Alex.

“Good to see you too, Ade,” Alex wheezes, wondering vaguely what would happen if Adrian and Kara ever had a competition to see who could hug hardest.

Adrian beams, his new silver stud earring glistening almost as brightly as his brown eyes as he bounces on his toes and splays his hands open to the rest of the room, which – Alex only now notices – is littered with old couches and arm chairs, nearly every inch of the walls covered in art work, in posters, in rainbow flags, bi flags, ace flags, trans flags, flags for orientations and identities Alex doesn’t have the words for yet.

And scattered across those couches, chairs, and upturned crates are teenagers in varying states of studiousness. Two are crouched in the corner and utterly absorbed in their laptops, headphones in; others have notebooks in their laps but conversation on their lips; and some are sprawled in each other’s laps.

“Everyone!” Adrian announces with all the flair of a theater major. “This is my queer mama Maggie and her wife Alex!”

Even the kids on their laptops grin at that, and one of them takes out one of their earpods and gestures with a pen in Maggie and Alex’s direction.

“Good to meet you two – we were all starting to suspect that Adrian made up his mythically supportive cop friend and her lovely girlfriend, Adrian, no one’s trying to pretend we believe you that they’re married yet.”

Maggie laughs and Alex blushes, and Adrian gasps in mock horror.

“Are you questioning my honor, Dani?”

Dani arches a lazy eyebrow, a grin on their face, and looks right past Adrian to Maggie. “Detective Sawyer, right? Are you two actually married yet?”

“Not yet, kiddo,” Maggie answers, squeezing Alex’s hand as she beams and Alex’s stomach somersaults pleasantly.

“Well, married or not yet, we’ve heard a shitton about you both from this one,” a girl with buzzed hair and a green streak on one side grins up from her sprawl on a femmey-looking girl’s lap.

“And we’ve heard a lot about you all. Lemme see if I can do this,” Alex perks up, and Maggie beams proudly as her girl gets animated with the rush of excitement, the rush of acceptance; the rush of a challenge where she won’t be punished if she gets something wrong.

“You’re Mariah, and unless you’re up to something on the side, that must be Carrie.” The girls squeal and Adrian and Maggie exchange glances and beam.

Alex squints around the room and rattles off the names and random facts about everyone in the room, and they all cheer more and more raucously the farther along she gets. When she circulates back around to Adrian, she holds her hand out to him.

“But I don’t believe I’ve met this handsome young man. Alex Danvers, FBI. And who is your absolutely beautiful lady friend?” she asks, cocking her head toward Maggie, and the kids in the room – even Dani on their laptop – explode with laughter as Maggie blushes deeply and hides her smiling face in the hand that isn’t still holding Alex’s.

Adrian doesn’t miss a beat.

“Pleasure to meet you, Alex Danvers, FBI. I’m Adrian Rodriguez, National City born and bred, Star City transplant, general badass. And my absolutely beautiful lady friend is Maggie Sawyer, NCPD Science Division: into motorcycles, girls, badassery, reforming the system she works in, and wildly kinky sex. I think you two’ll get along just great.”

Dani shrieks and Mariah leans over and smacks Adrian’s arm lightly, and he ducks as both Maggie and Alex go for a playful headlock.

“Is anything I said untrue?!” he squeals, and Maggie’s blush grows as she buries her face in Alex’s shoulder.

“You’re lucky I love you, Ade!” she stammers when she finally turns around, Alex wrapping her arms around Maggie’s waist from behind as Adrian laughingly leans in for a kiss on both cheeks, which Maggie happily gives him to a chorus of awwwws.

They’re in a completely different city; in a public college, whereas Alex had gone to Stanford; in a club room in the basement of the Student Union, whereas Alex had spent her entire college career in the lab or throwing up in the bathroom; surrounded by queer kids with bright smiles and barely hidden scars, whereas Alex was just coming out a decade older than them.

And she’s somehow never felt more at home.